“Does Eva have any kids?” Alpha Joel asked. “Stepchildren? Anything?”
“Uh . . .” Ben scanned the tablet’s contents. “The one she had was a stillborn.”
Alpha Joel huffed at the computer. “Anything else? Coworkers? Friends?”
“This woman had none of them.” Even Ben sounded disappointed.
“There has to be something.” Alpha Joel wasn’t going to accept the fact that they might have more dead-ends than anything else.
“How about Kevin Johnson?”
“That’s a super common name, it’s going to show up everywhere,” Aria muttered and Adrian agreed. How many ‘Kevin Johnsons’ would they need to sift through?
“I’ve got at least five possibles,” Alpha Joel muttered. “Age parameters?”
“Erm, around seventy.”
“Lists of properties they own?” Alpha Joel asked.
“Two of them have private property. One of them is renting, while the other . . . it’s a rental too.”
His dad then asked, “Can we get a map of all the accidents? Maybe we can use that to create a better border?
“Pull down the projector screen,” Alpha Joel told his beta and once she did, a map was immediately reflected on the screen with red dots painted around. “There isn’t a certain concentration of places that shifters and nons have gone missing at . . . but we can say that they’re all centralized.”
“What do the x’s represent?” Aria wanted to know.
“Dead victims,” Adrian replied, already knowing the legend. “The o’s are the accidents.”
“That’s a lot,” she muttered.
“Yeah, it is.”
“The most recent ones seem to be around there, and the ones that are older are further out from the city.” His dad pointed to a section of the map. “Maybe they are in the suburbs? Like the outskirts?”
“What if that’s what they want us to think?” Ivan questioned.
“That’s a possibility.”
“Car shops,” Aria recalled. “Any recent car shops that fixed a wreck?”
“That’s right, the accident.” Beta Thea began to search again.
His dad also added, “Also, check if Kevin Johnson owns some sort of business.”
“Good idea,” Adrian heard Ivan mutter to Aria, clearly a little proud of her quick thinking.
“Thanks . . . hopefully it leads somewhere,” she said.
“I hope so too,” Ivan murmured.
“I found someone,” Beta Thea said. “I found ‘Kevin Johnson’ around seventy years old who owns an auto shop.”
The room was instantly filled with relief. Everyone had been holding their breaths for the longest time, and now they could finally breathe.
Finally, a good, solid, lead.
Alpha Joel quickly took the address, and placed it on the screen for everyone to see. It was a house located on the edges of the city in an older development area. Right next to the first address was the second address to the auto shop that was a less than ten-minute drive from the house.
This was their chance.
“But what if it’s wrong? We can’t just barge right into their house. We’re not the police and we don’t have a search warrant.” Adrian had to be real about it. It’s not like they could go in with guns blazing with their teeth bared and ready to fight. They had to do this in a way that won’t end up with all of them in prison or relocated.
“Can’t we notify the police or something?” Aria suggested.
“If we do that, it might take a week before they can actually search the house themselves. We’ve already waited enough,” his dad muttered.
“I think sending in a scouting team would be best,” Alpha Joel said as he pulled up more images of the house, the auto shop, and Kevin Johnson on the screen.
“What is their relationship?” Ivan asked, “Between Eva and Kevin?”
“He was her adoptee father’s cousin. So by extension, her uncle.”
There was even a legitimate connection.
“Who are you thinking of sending in?” Ben asked Alpha Joel.
“I think Ymir, Gloria, and Roshan,” Alpha Joel said. “They’re the best fighters with the most tact.”
“Does it really take the police that long to respond?” Aria whispered to him.
Adrian nodded.
His dad then asked, “So are you thinking of infiltration or will you send them in under disguise?”
“I was thinking both. We could bring in one of the cars so that they can check out the shop, then scout out the house. Hopefully, they’ll be able to find clues as to where Mira is and the others.”
“I think we should have two teams,” Ben mentioned. “Just in case one of them gets compromised.”
“Who’s the other team?”
Ben looked at him and wondered where he was going with this.
“Adrian, Carmen, Nick, and Leila.”
His dad furrowed his brows immediately while Alpha Joel automatically opposed to the idea.
“They’re just kids.” Ivan even came to his defense. “You can’t just put them in a life-threatening situation!”
“Listen to me for a second, Alpha Joel said that he wanted to use his three best suited for the job, but they’re all fully grown adults. If they get caught, they have to face worse consequences legally, but if we also send in a group of kids, a group of teens then they can create an excuse and because they’re younger—”
“They’ll be given more leeway if they’re caught,” his dad finished Ben’s train of thought.
“It’ll be a group they wouldn’t expect.”
“It’s extremely dangerous,” Alpha Joel said with such gravity. “Are you really considering this?”
Ben pointed out on the map. “The house is in an old development. Teenagers get mischievous. We can even give them props like fireworks or spray paint to continue their narrative. It would be a lost less suspicious than sending three grown adults into a development area with no property for sale.”
“Are you really considering this?” Alpha Joel repeated, still seemed opposed to the idea. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
Ivan verbally agreed.
“But it might be the best chance at getting it
